chronicles of a wayfarer

The Temple of Convenience

2011-04-11T04:59:00.009-06:00

The first in the series - Service Stations of South Australia:

Bordertown – 24th December 2010-12-24

Situated some seven hours from Melbourne and at an estimated two – four hours from Adelaide (the ETA will become more apparent if and when we ever reach our final destination), you’ll find a non-descript town that lies on the border of Victoria and South Australia. It goes by the name of Bordertown, apparently. It isn’t too dissimilar to the few and far between towns, if you can call them that, that occupy the main road connecting the two cities on the in-land route, and a bit beyond Ararat.

At a glance, you’ll want to make a run for it and get the fuck out of here ASAP. You’ll be greeted with locusts, flatlands, arid landscape and not a lot else. I decided not to run for shelter from the un-relentless heat to the nearest supermarket (yes, they have a supermarket!) called “Foodland”, and instead decided to inspect the front grill of our wee Niamh, the trusty Mitzubishi from that period of the ‘90s I suspect spawned Haddaway and Boyzone, for the innumerate carcasses of locusts that had made it from the windshield to the grill. The most exciting thing about our drive so far was the swarms of locusts that we kept dodging, both in, and out of the motor. Sure enough, moments after a bird hovered near Niamh’s face and laid out the biggest womp right in my line of vision of this spectacularly bland and arid landscape, we then entered the land of locusts. Death by locusts. And lots of them, dying slowly and frantically right before my eyes. Who would want to live in rural Australia if by foot, or car, you’re having to swat locusts and watch them die, one after another, right before your eyes. I dunno how, but that bird has become synonymous with the beginning of Locust Vision.

So back to Bordertown. The lads were inspecting the contents of Foodland, which, to my surprise was better stocked than our local Supermarket Coles. The queues were pretty grim, mind, but let’s not forget it’s Christmas Eve, which is easy to do when it’s hovering over the 30 degrees mark outside our air conditioned bubble. We managed to come away with a four pack of Flake Cornettos for four bucks, a six pack of mince pies and two litres of water. Still unsure where the queues could come from as it looks like there shouldn’t be many permanent residents kicking about.

Now onto the Dunnies. Oh my god, Vietnam, eat your heart out. I’ve never been in a toilet so clean, so relaxing and so air-conditioned in my life. Really spacious (wheelchair friendly, I guess), no piss or Tom Tits on the floor/wall/handles, pristine bowl/lid, fresh hand soap. All in all, it was a pleasure to have spent my whole minute or two in there. Didn’t once have to worry about hovering or catching STDs from my intimate, albeit brief, time there. The toilets were also situated in the back of a café which had the most amazing smell of caffeine seeping through the air; non of that Nescafe shit. All around there were aald biddies sat blethering over their home-made ice cream or cake and families sat chilling the fuck out. Where they come from, I don’t know, but I guess there really isn’t anywhere else to go in Bordertown and I’m happy for them that they don’t have to put up with the traditional service station amenities of over priced Powerades and Pringles.

Verdict: 5 / 5

Doesn’t look like much, if anything, from the outside, but once you’ve cleaned your grill and stocked your car full of crap food, you’ll be pleased you spent that ten minutes of your xxxx hour, locust filled drive, here. Sure hell beats simultaneously pissing behind a bush and being bitten by mosquitoes. We’re off to a good start an I didn’t even have a chance to sample to coffee or cake. I’m a lady of leisure when it comes to my toilet matters and not easily swayed for the 5/5 mark.

Gone West

2011-02-28T00:07:00.012-07:00

Where am I? I’ve forgotten and neglected this thing for over a year now. I’ll fill in the gaps of my life between Asia to Perth, WA, where I’ll be based for at least the next four months, over the coming weeks/months/years, probably. But I may as well start with the most recent, I guess? I'll get some photos up when I get on a decent connection.

After a week of being in Perth we’ve finally found somewhere to live! Perth’s been through an unusual heatwave with highs of a consistent 37 – 39 degrees all week, and through it, we’ve been sweating our body weight through the tent; fighting the most ridiculous amount of mossies in the aforementioned tent; sleeping in fear of being bitten by an infamous Redback spider, which so happened to a young Brazilian girl THREE TIMES on her face in our campsite. So our place? Well thanks to Ciaran’s Irish charm (I reckon) we’re living somewhere with two tennis courts, a gym, a swimming pool and our landlord’s said we’ve got access to the campervan if we wanna go down to Margaret River for a weekend. Oh and the kayaks, yeah we can use them on the river that our patio looks onto, did I forget to mention he’s two bikes we can use? Oh shit, how could I forget there’s a ‘mini’ bar floor to ceiling of beer and we can use the spare car (unfortunately not one of his eleven Jaguars) if we need to nip to the shops in it! I’ve no idea what’s going on. I’m not even sure I’m ready for it. I’m gonna fly the yacht rock yuppie flag high though, ‘cos for $10 LESS than what we’re paying in the campsite, we get to live in an air conditioned dream, fifteen minutes from the city, rather than an hour commute from our sweat fest tent and he’s only asking for one week’s rent as a bond/deposit. Up the punx? The inaugural burning of our tent will take place tomorrow at around 20:00 WST, South Freo.

The other night I heard from two separate Irish backpackers that the Australian government had changed the stipulations for the infamous Working Holiday Visa. At present and prior to our arrival in Strayah, you get a one year Working Holiday Visa for a small cost. The conditions is that it’s to fund your travel through the country, fair enough, but that you can only work for one employer for six months. To get your second year, unlike the Aussies who get two years straight up and given to them back hyem, you have to undertake a glorious and laborious 88 days (3 months if you’re lucky, even less if you’re luckier to pay off a farmer/have a famer sympathise with your disposition and who’ll happily sign off you’ve done 88 days when you’ve only done xxx weeks’ worth…) of regional work. Read as farm work, construction, labour or something else that falls under the rural postcode and the less than glamorous work. Apparently with the new visa rules that are coming into place in July, people who apply after July 2011 get a two year visa straight up. What about the people already here? you still have to do your 3 months of slave labour, no questions. If this is the case, then you've gotta laugh at Team Scatter's abysmal attempt at gaing the second visa.

For our second visa we intended to head east and north. Northeast, you know. Drive from Melbourne all the way through NSW, QLD, stop at some mates in the Gold Coast and then head to the Sunshine Coast, see more mates, and then find some fruit picking work. We were well read, ill educated and off in vain to get our second visa. I’d hummed and harred it since we arrived; could I really see myself standing in a field for 3 months, living in a tent, and getting up at 4am to begin work all for a second visa? Nope. Well I gave it a go, and I lasted three fucking days at it!

We never made it east, never mind northeast due to the floodings. The farms, crops and anything like that were screwed from the insane floods and torrential rain Queensland was having for the months prior to us leaving our homely comforts of Melbourne. Instead, we went west; the lads from Melbourne, myself from Adelaide via Indonesia, and then we scuttled through some incredible coastline just where The Great Australian Bight starts, drove across The Nullabor (pure outback and also home to the longest, flattest road in OZ), hit Albany, WA where we encountered phone signal for the first time since we left Adelaide and then hung around the incredible Margaret River for just under two weeks.

We thought we’d got lucky. We’d arrived just in time for the grape picking season and sure enough, the agencies were hiring. Vineyards, from what we heard, were nowhere near as bad as the tales of avocado picking we’d hear (for which I’d probably eat the profits, anyway!). Mates had warned us against banana picking, READ: rats and snakes around the trees; and we were also told that mangoes were the absolute shittiest of the lot, ‘cos the juice from the mangoes burns your skin. You could say we were pretty stoked to be living in such an amazing town. The Indian Ocean a five minute drive away; white beaches; crystal clear water that you can even swim in, which is unheard of in Melbourne’s icy waters; vineyards; surfers; a consistent 30 degrees temp plus added breeze. Bingo!

As it stood. It was a fucking disaster! Working within three days didn’t prove enough. Despite what they tell you, the agencies over hire, and as a result, we only ended up getting two days of work. Vineyards only go through agencies in WA and that means you get paid by the bucket load and where you work varies from day to day. A typical day would be getting up at 04:00; meeting the rest at 05:00; driving for 45mins to Dunsborough to the vineyard; work for seven hours battling the desire to pass out in the 34 degree heat, which, for the record, apparently gets up to 45 degrees in the vineyards ‘cos there’s no shelter from the relentless sun beating down on you. Aside from that, we got paid $2 a bucket, which, is fucking pitiful. All the new starters averaged $50 - $60 a day for seven hours work, and bearing in mind that after 11am it’s so fucking hot you spend most your time drinking water and trying not to pass out, the work gets harder and the heat gets hotter. To put it bluntly, we ended up making a loss being there. What we earned, if we were to get five days work, wouldn’t have covered the cost of camping or petrol. During our time in Margaret River (and also over the whole road trip), between the three of us we’d bought only one 12 pack of beer that was on offer and were living frugally on tuna pasta and the like and we were STILL making a loss!!! If we hadn’t left when we did, we wouldn’t have been able to afford petrol to Perth, never mind a flight to NZ which is our next stop after Australia. I had planned out the route home, I was facing fruit picking til my visa expired in Sept, still unable to save, potentially overstaying my visa and facing deportation. This romantic image of a slow, slow cargo ship that took months to reach Europe still lingers in my mind. Me having to clean and cook or hiding in the vessel ‘til I got back to the Motherland, broke!

I wish I could say, “Yeah! We drove across Australia with a boot full of booze and narcotics, Fear and Loathing in Australia, style! Carnage, we got to Maggie R and had blown all our cash on acid, booze and the best MDMA money could find”. But instead, we were up at 4am every day, in bed by 9pm, living off the very basic. The biggest hit I got was an avocado early on in SA and the only salvation was going to the beach after sweating our body weight on vineyards in WA all for a megre $50 that made us broke and extremely stressed. The words of our supervisor telling us all to acclimatise and boasting that he only needs ½ a litre of water a day still rings in my head. All our savings (and quite a bit of it) blown on basic living and then we were faced with a very quick and stealthy move to Perth to get back in the air conditioned world of temping, to save up and to be able to afford some conditioner and a new razor, never mind a meal out, a visit home, or a flight to New Zealand.

So that was it. All three days of fruit picking. Bang.

whims and limbs

2009-10-13T12:02:00.000-06:00

the tatmadaw is the burmese military. this was taken in mandalay.

i don't really know where time goes. i used to freak out big time about time; always worrying that my life and time was unfolding in front of my eyes and slipping between my fingers without me realising. queue my "it's all about having a good story" rant and you'll have a slight insight into my mind and one of the things i wanna achieve most of all in life. it's all about hearing good stories over ten changs too many and i don't wanna get to that age and then think "oh, shit!". yeah, i have perpetually itchy feet and like to work on whims and limbs, but until this summer i never really put it into practice. i was slipping into the comfort zones of my south manchester lifestyle and if i didn't get out then, i probably would've been there for the next ten years. i miss my friends like you wouldn't believe, but it'd been two years since i moved back from madrid and i fancied a challenge and a change.

over summer time was irrelevant. i only knew the rough date or time by when i arrived in a country or when my visa or stamp was due up. time plays no purpose or holds no significance when you're on the road. as long as you make whatever bus or flight you're booked on, then it's all good and even at that, it's not the end of the world. until i flew back to bangkok from yangon and the final seven days was looming, i hadn't even thought about the post-asia times until i left burma. i think it was all made easier because i knew i wasn't spending any significant time in the UK. a two day turnaround, hello to family, wash some clothes, grab some knitwear and off i went on a plane to vancouver. ha!

5am sunrise near mui ne.

kenny our zealous ha long bay tour guide.

the tee was worth the $50 for ha long bay tour, alone. fucking genius.

my nine week long jaunt felt like it was gonna go on forever, in the best possible way. i'm gonna put that down to the fact i went with no plan or clue where i was going except with the loose idea of meeting up with becky and scott and travelling north to south, going armed with a multiple entry visa for vietnam, a return flight in september and malaria pills. as it turns out, i went to thailand for three days and ended up stayed for two weeks, went to burma for two weeks (too short!) where i met some of the most legendary people in one of the most fascinating and fucked up lands ever. scuttled through cambodia on a whistlestop tour, said hello to the angkor watt, fended off even more tuk tuks, made it back to saigon for one last bowl of pho bo and then boarded the singapore airlines airbus on sat 12th september destined for london which i ended up having a 13hr transit in singapore. in that time i managed hooked up with tasha an thomas, drank an unhealthy amount of rum, caught two hours sleep and spoon with tasha then boarded my flight pissed as a fart. didn't sleep a wink on the flight, arrived into london on one of the greyest and coldest september day imaginable and then sat waiting and waiting and waiting for my coach to newcastle. my coach left london victoria at 23:30 which was roughly 05/06:30 se asian time. Bearing in mind i'd had two hours sleep in more than two days, i was starting to royally crash and burn. my solution to me not missing my coach was speaking to one of the greats, robert clayton, and asking him to just chat shit to me to keep me awake. that's what friends are for, eh?

the wonderful hoi an, vietnam.

i’m now in canada where i’ll be stationed for the next year. i turned twenty-four somewhere over the atlantic where i managed to have a 36hr birthday with time differences et all. now am trying to slowly regain to normality, whatever the fuck that means. jetlag finally caught up and defeated me; it hit me like a wall of impending doom but i'm over that and the brief stress of unemployment. banff is rad and am off to work for round II of my split shift in a few hours and it's snowing heavily outside. it all suits me to a total tee. around five weeks ago i was on my way back to bangkok from burma and hanging out with new and old friends in a city i never once had any connection with or desire to visit. here i've succeeded in finding a bar which sells gin and tonics at $2.50 and plays decent music. it's also a stone's throw from work and in four weeks the slopes open and i'll be fleeshing down the mountains wild as a boghillian on crack (maybe not).

so my wanderlust took me to se asia where i managed to party with people i didn’t know four months months ago, hooked up with old pals from ten years ago, an impromptu arrangement of hanging out in singapore with old pals from mancatraz and new pals from travels, was attacked by a vietnamese pineapple seller on a beach who was armed with a ketamine sized meat cleaver, dodged minors in burma, corrupted many a mind, managed to caress a few souls along the way, got embroiled in some ridiculous (yet fun!) situations, heard way too much UB40 for my liking, went to some parties that revolve around the moon, in-jokes, gaped at temples, shared cigars with monks, grew an unadultered love for uncle ho and somehow came out standing despite the amount of changs I consumed in two weeks alone in thailand.

home from home. where i was propped for two weeks.

home from home again. jack, a cockrel and a singapore sling.

in total, the last four months has seen me:

-touch down on three different continents

-seven countries

-15 different coaches which clocked in at roughly 150 hours of me sat on my arse questioning my life, sexuality and why the fuck the vietnamese bus drivers have to keep their hand on the fucking horn for the duration of the ride through the night.

one break down amongst many. near thazi, burma.

-six boats and eight flights. flew approx 8, 000 miles to and from vietnam via singapore. boshed christ knows how many valiums, drank an inexcusable amount of changs and pretty much hurt my cheeks from laughing so much. along the way we saw a lot of celebrity deaths. for me to notice or remember means there must have been a fair few. i don't normally clock any celebrity related business. bobby robson passed away and john hughes died sometime in the middle of me drinking buckets and laughing at all the g-bronis on haad rin at the full moon. i didn't pick up a news paper once except to check the news and happenings in burma. all in all, i was and still am living in an isolated bubble fuelled only by the radge people i meet along the way. christ, a plane destined for koh samui crashed the same day i was heading for koh phagnan, the next island along. i didn't know about this 'til i switched on my phone and went online three days after arriving and received an abundance of messages hoping i wasn't on the aforementioned flight.

connect four in a very drunken nha trang, vietnam.

as quite rightly pointed out, the temples of bagan (burma) look like gold, perky boobs.

here is nathalie and i on u bein bridge, burma. supposedly the world's longest teak bridge. as taken by ellen

wey, i would trade big mountains or rooms full of gold for the places i’ve seen and the faces i’ve met. since leaving the UK my life's become a whirlwind and hive of fun, sunsets, debauchery and culture shocks. i don’t care how cliché I sound, this holiday’s been full of them. clichés fucking rule. life is absolutely rad.

holiday in cambodia

2009-09-23T00:41:00.000-06:00

more insight into asian bus rides!

okay, so you're planning a visit to cambodia, you've survived the scam bus without too much disdain, now what next?

after listening to the dead kennedys' "holiday in cambodia" on your mp3 player and you've arrived at your guesthouse, you're gonna need a cold beer and some quick tutoring. we opted to stay at the garden village, which numerous backpackers had recommended to us. i headed there with two mancs; although one's supposedly welsh, though her accent and "eeeeyy yarrr!" makes me think otherwise! we were also supported by a dutch guy, an austrian and one of the most irritating pricks i've ever met in my life, who goes by the name of tinglish (more on him later).

garden village was ace. it had everything from $1 mattress in an open space kinda dorm to your $15 aircon, ensuite, double bed luxury. i'd've probs opted for the matress in an open space kinda setting if it weren't for the torrential rain we had. another thing, getting to the garden village involved wading through puddles of red mud. roads are non-existant, rain's a pouring, does this fucking guesthouse exist?! well yeah, it does, and aside from the moodiest staff ever, myself, tammy and kim got a room that clocked in at roughly $1.3333333333333333333 each and we had the privilege of a door and the bathroom next to us. i call that en suite, like, in the loosest sense of the word.

the jukebox, much to my absolute joy, was absolutely mind blowingly brilliant! the general consensus is plug in and play; a lot of people just moved their music onto the computer. i walked to the rooftop bar to hear sonic youth's sister belting out. i was like "guys, are we listening to sonic youth?!". tumbleweed may have blown passed. it had everything from explosions in the sky to aphex twin, to neil young, to creedence, to godspeed, to ritchie hawtin and a lot of stuff i've no idea about in between. my first night i decided to stay up late reading and generally having a ponder over the next few week's movements. ultimately this was the holy stress of blind panic that your travels were coming to an end, trying to formulate some kind of loose plan for canada and figuring out how the hell i was gonna cope with two days back in the hyem land. aka northumberland.

whilst i was sat scratching my head, darting emails to people about aforementioned stress and trying to prepare myself for any culture shock that might slam me in the face, i decided to drink 50c beer. at this point it was just myself and some other radge, aging irish guy sat. we had neil young on inexcusably loud and i suddenly had another one of those "holy shit what the fuck's going on in this world" moments.

i opted to leave seeing the angkor wat a day. i was still dog tired from literally being on the road for three days on the trot. from inle lake - yangon - bangkok - siem reap. all in three days. so i spent the day after scoping out what siem reap had to offer. which honestly isn't much aside the temples, which are way outta town, and a street cunningly named "bar / pub street". it's basically like freshers week on a street. you could be on any road, in any student bar in any part of the world. i almost definitely didn't feel like i was in cambodia. there's another cunningly named place, this time called the angkor wat? bar. it was good craik, played shit indie akin to fifth avenues (looking at those manchester heads, there!). you won't find it difficult to find the place, it's pretty recognisable. once you've spent more than a week in se asia, if that, you'll notice that everyone plus their mothers own the t-shirt from this bar. it's not quite as noticeable as the laos - vangvieng tubing vest absolutely fucking everyone has (i'd say the amount of tees i saw with this on has definitely put me off going tubing. but not laos, that'll be for next time). other highlights are saigon beer vests and on khao san road you'll be inundated with 7-11 shirts. ker-ching! you'll start noticing them and dodging them like the plague. cynical? me?

so once i scoped out the depths of siem reap, i had to then get my head round the amount of valium they'd willingly sell you over the counter without ANY questions being asked. i had my spiel all ready, something about long journeys, not being able to sleep, fear of flying... nada. "so lady, how many strips do you realllllllllllly want? you can have the whole box" i laughed, parted with $8 and walked away 30 10mg of special Vs richer.

my week running up to the big fly home made me check itineraries and i then realised i had 13hrs in singapore. shit the bed, i'm running low on cash and not heard much in favour of singapore for the budget conscious mind. fuck fuck fuck, do i sleep in changi airport which has it all from free net, to cinemas, to outdoor pools, or do i go for a midnight cruise round the metropolis or not? not a chuff of a clue. the following day out of sheer luck, fate and my absolute bafflement at how things now keep falling into place with little effort and huge whimsical mechanics on my part; i get an email from our very own tasha whittle of manchester heights saying that for various reasons she was in town with the family and wanted to know if i wanted to meet her. what the fuck! not only that, but one of the salad day entourage, thomas, was also in town. how did this happen? old and new pals from far and wide happen to be in a strange and alien city to me that only the day before i knew absolutely no-one and was a bit skeptical about wandering aimlessly around a massive, expensive city whilst my savings were dwindling. suddenly i was getting excited for my trip to end. well to see good pals.

not many people irritate me. some how over the last three months my patience got better and better. i'm really mild mannered and non-confrontational, although can be ridiculously hyper active when the time comes. i absolutely adore people. queue katie's "it's all about having a good story" rant... "if you've got a good story to tell, i'll sit with you all day and night drinking and listening... i don't wanna grow old and not have a good story to tell". people fucking rule and the number of ace people i've met and know totally outweigh the bad. it's just a shame when you can't seem to rid that one irritable presence that seems to bring down everyone. let's cut to the fucking chase. the guy in question goes by the name of tinglish. we first met tinglish on the scam bus at service station # 33.777777777777777. so as "subway boy" ran off to find his bait (see previous post!) we were all chatting. there was a guy who'd been teaching in s korea, two japanese guys, an austrian, a dutch guy... and tinglish. we all ask what everyone else has been up to, you know, the usual travelling questions of where have you been, what are you doing etc etc. tinglish retorts by saying he's thai, been educated in london for last few years for uni and was back in asia for a bit to see family and then do a spot of travelling. fair enough like. the two mancs were skeptical from the start. they kept quizzing him saying that his english was just too good for such a short time. i figured that it was more than do-able. sure, his english was at BBC standard, but i figured boarding school educated and shipped off over here to go to uni. whatever, when you meet people, you don't presume they're bullshitting you, do you? well tinglish started having a go at one of the others for being "such a fucking fool" for booking his journey through some agent in the south islands. i don't know the intricacies, but he was basically laying into him for being so dumb for falling for the scam bus. err, excuse me, look around you and see where we are. prick. so we all, literally five of us, turn around and say "hang on dude, YOU'RE the one who's supposedly local, what the fuck are YOU doing on the scam bus?!". later in the evening he found out the dutch guy's name was pronounced "coon" and couldn't stop laughing. he ran over to the bunch of oxford graduates who were there and he somehow knew (lovely guys, for the record!) and was like "guys, GUESS WHAT HIS NAME IS!" really, dude. it's not fucking funny. despite you bragging about how amazing your I.Q level is, you come across as 16 years old and having never met anyone outside your own social niche before.

this shit went on 'til he left for phnom penh. he had a bandaged hand which he told us he'd guffed up whilst playing a game of "killer" in thailand. apparently he was about to hit the winning pot and did the victory dance before he'd even hit the ball. so he shoved his hand high in the air and it got caught in the over-head fan! ha ha ha ha a ha ha. i later heard, from different guys, that this story changed somewhat. ryan, seattle born, lived in norway for five years and with one of the most incredible facial adornment on record, said tinglish had told him he'd done it at the garden village. only flaw to that story / lie was that the fan was on the complete opposite side of the room to the pool table. i dunno, he kept on going on about how no-one "got" his humour, but it was basically his cover up for getting himself into the most awkward of situations you could cut with a knife. like some "joke" about how tammy would rather spend 5 days in bangCOCK than in london. no-one got it and no-one laughed. the thing that annoyed me the most was his constant jokes about how he was in cambodia to bosh some child prostitutes. shit man, dry sense of humour is fuckin rad, but you're in a country where child prostitution is imminent, rife and an absolute despairing situation, you really shouldn't be there. just get the fuck out.

we found out about three days in that he wasn't from thailand at all (it was plausible, no-one could just get their head around the amount of bullshit he spieled off). he was born and raised in hackney and HE made the digs at US for being so "gullible" to fall for it. i'm sorry, but just cock off. no-one's ever gonna question your race, birth place whatever. he looked like he could be thai and am never, ever gonna turn around to anyone and tell them they're bullshitting me.

i haven't even mentioned the bloody angkor watt yet! my hands are growing numb in this canadian temperature and my eyes are getting bleary! the angkor watt was so unreal. like nothing i've ever seen. the weather was shit and rainy but i reckon we got to see it in a completely different light. i literally spent the day marvellin in it. it was ridiculous, it's like stepping back in time. oh, and en route to the temples we got mugged by some fucking monkeys! our tuk tuk driver got excited and was like "GUYS LOOK AT THE MONKEYS!" he stopped the tuk tuk, we looked over shouting "AWWWW!" like stupid tourists we were and next thing i know about ten monkeys ransacked our tuk tuk and did one with our fucking breakfast of champs which included my splurge on kettle chips, sprite, grapefruit and another tin of pop. the thieving little bastards. i kept sayin to the guy that they were paying him commission. i don't think he found that too funny!

some essential phrases to learn before heading to cambodia, once you've nailed them, you'll be ready for anything

so repeat after me:

[in a shrill voice]

"hello ladyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. buy somethiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing. one dolaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar. special priiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice"

[in this case, make sure the stress from low to high is placed on every second word.]

now for the tuk tuk drivers:

"hello! lady! where you go? i wait long time for you! cheap cheap, happy hour! i make special price for you"

[keep your intonation short, sharp and prompt. not messing around, cut to the chase]

"cheap cheap" is always a winner. you know you;ve been in se asia too long when you hear a car or motorbike beeo their horn twice and you hear the words "CHEAP CHEAP!"

and for the children:

now begging is something that's more prevalent in cambodia than any other third world country i visited in the two months. in general, as you can imagine, it's pretty depressing. in cambodia it's fucked. cambodia is fucked. there's a massive gap between the rich and the poor. you shouldn't compare countries as every country is different, but for instance in burma, the kids are poor. poverty like you've never seen. there's very little hassle and they'd rather you just chat to them and listen. in cambodia it's really different. the kids are wearing the smartest clothes with the neat trimmed hair, you can't walk down the street without having four children swarm around you. they're sharp, cheeky and have an answer for everything (normally in five different languages!).

i'm normally quite good (or bad!?) at giving banter or ignoring it. well not wholly, but once you've made eye contact, that's it, there's no getting away til you part with some dinero. i was walking down bar street in siem reap in broad daylight and i had one girl hanging off my arm, a boy pulling at the back of my shirt and another literally tugging at my skirt all at once. it's so depressing, the begging got too much. one boy came up to me and simply said "buy me?"

one night we all went out and at 3am the lads wanted some food. we opted for street food. i wasn't actually eating but next thing i knew there was some girl who couldn't be no older than 7 yrs old - although it's hard to tell - crawling all over me, putting her face in my boobs and in a sinister squawk screaming "NO MONEY NO HONEY, NO LADY NO BOOM BOOM!" in my face. she kept pulling at my chunky necklace and screaming into my eyes. fuck about, what went wrong. in the last two weeks of se asia i seemed to spend it dodging bloody minors in varying forms!

so the final few days, shit, i had to get to phnom penh, then to saigon, to singapore and then to london in the course of four days! time was running out and my whistlestop tour of cambodia was drawing to a close. met some bloody amazing people and we had a good group going with ryan, patrick, the mancs and kyle, who i'd formally met in burma. i found out just the other day that he's only just left there. three weeks on! legendary work. notable highlight was us all getting high in his room til 5/6am and me trying to do one with his dinosaur blanket that i'd managed to wrap around, under, over and tucked to perfection. in my head i know what am going on about. poor kyle, nearly without a duvet or cover! ryan and i decided to leave him be. en route back to the paupers' living accomm (kyle was in the $15 aircon and ensuite rooms of joy) we pressed our ears up to the sky and listened to the frogs and crickets going berserk at an ear piercing level. we must've woke everyone up. the insects in se asia are like nothing else. you get used to a constant din and i found it somewhat comforting.

SCAM BUS!

2009-09-20T20:20:00.001-06:00

the dubious thai - cambodian scam bus, eh?

the border in question, for the record, is aranyaprathet/poipet, the most travelled crossing from bangkok to siem reap.

i knew before i alighted the bus on sunday 6th sept that it was the scam bus i was boarding. i didn't really care, to be honest. i had to get out of bangkok ASAP especially as i had seven days to get to saigon for my return flight back to europe. at 400baht and a time frame of doom it had to be done. have to say, it was made a lot easier given the fact i'd done some forward reading and been de-briefed by others.

the scam bus is famous. probably as famous as the laos - vietnam scam bus. anyone who's been to se asia has either been or one or the other or spoken to someone who'd been on it. let's just say it's pretty fucking entertaining from start to finish.

i don't really use travel guides much. i'd never used one before coming to asia. one thing the lonely planet is good for is the following: border crossings, maps and... wait for it... the sections highlighted as DANGERS AND ANNOYANCES. in the mekon delta and i soon found out the guide to cambodia, there's a massive section, in a frame, titled SCAM BUS!

the scams are exactly as outlined in the travel guide, exactly how other people explained to me and yet people fall for these scams time and time again. we tried explaining to the others "DON'T DO IT!", but think at first they thought we were just being stingey and awkward, 'til reality sunk in!

if you're ever planning on travelling overland from bangkok to siem reap then take heed of the following!

scam #1: so i'm sat outside the travel agent on kao san road chatting with a japanese guy who was waiting for the same dubious bus. some over zealous and cheery thai agent comes along with all the paperwork for the cambodian visa. i start filling it out then once done, he's like "that's $36". erm, hang on, the cambodian visa only costs $20. so i basically tell him, in a more eloquent manner, to cock right off. he then starts to say i'll hold the bus up, i may have to wait at the border for three days (!!!!!!), he can offer an express service... i look at him and tell him firmly, there's no fucking way i'm paying $36 for him to slip almost double the visa's worth into his back pocket. he walks off, rather pissed off and infuriated at me. do i care? do i fuck.

scam #2: so you get to the bus and they make you wait at the border for ages. this i don't mind. when you're eventually into cambodia you stop at some gash awful service station for another hour or so. that i don't mind either. just get me to siem reap and that's all i care about. the reason why they do this is so you arrive into siem reap around 7/8pm (this whole journey should take approx. seven hours, it took us 12. no sweat, like i said, i knew what i was in for). my friend nathalie did this journey in reverse and it she was in bangkok by 4pm. another reason why they draw this out is so that when you arrive into siem reap you'll stay at one of their overpriced guesthouses in the shadiest suburbs of town. whilst you're enduring scam #2 the aforementioned gibroni will constantly mither you to fill out the forms and insist that there's no way you can get through without him doing so. bite your tongue and don't give in.

now let's look at scam #1 and #2. as it was around the time of the full moon party in thailand the bus was a lot quieter than normal, apparently. i'd say there was about thirty people on it. so looking at scam #1 only three people refused to give some bawbag an extra $16 to do something that basically involves yourself walking up to the counter and handing over your dollar dollar bill, y'all. $16 split between him and whichever cambodian offical/mafia/police officer, times by 27 people equates to roughly $432. not fucking bad for a quiet day's work!!!!! myself and coincidentally two other mancunians were the only ones who point blank refused. it's utter, utter bollocks that you slow the queue down. my japanese friend arrived onto the bus on the cambodian side approx. 45mins after we did. call that an express service?

one thing that i did give into, but not for want of trying, was forking out 100baht/$3 extra for the visa. picture the scene:

you go up to the counter, there's a MASSIVE sign hung on the wall saying "TOURIST VISA $20". the cambodian offical says it'll be $23. i laugh, point and ask why. he then gets irate, starts screaming in my face that i'm fucking deaf, stupid and can't i listen (his words, not mine). so i retaliate by shouting and pointing as he himself did, saying "can't you read, the sign says $20!". he gives some lame excuse about the fact we're not at the embassy -no shit, sherlock- and them's the rules. i suddenly thought, what's 3 bucks to a guy who's gonna determine whether or not i get into his kingdom when the rest of the bus have paid $16 more.

scam #3: okay, i'd been made fully aware of this one by the lads i went to koh phagnan with, they'd been stung by it and to be honest, who wouldn't if you'd never visted cambodia before or knew any better?

so you're in no-man's land, well you've just made it through the border and waiting for the dregs of the bus to get through. our enthusiastic tour guide points to the money exchange and suggests you change your dollars there as they don't accept $ in cambodia. the exchange rate there is pitiful. again, i reiterate, bull. shit. so you get to cambodia, withdraw cash and alas! the ATMs churn out freshly printed US dollars, bars accept dollars, as does the night market and tuk tuks! my mates got ripped off by about £15 each. it sounds plausible if you've never been to the country before, who's to know? again, if you think about the number of people doing this crossing, then again, it's not half bad for a day's work. i'm not frugal, nor am i a tight arse, but one thing i'm almost definitely not is wanting to be taken for a fucking mug or fool. it's the principle of the whole ordeal that both riled and entertained me immensely.

so when we're at the second stop waiting and wondering when we were actually gonna leave for siem reap myself and a guy we'd met decide to go ask the driver if he could show us on a map where in town he was gonna be dropping us off. suddenly he doesn't speak any english. a girl who was on our bus runs to our mercy and hark! she can speak cambodian. BINGO! all he'd tell her was that we'd be dropped at a "gas station". bloody hell!

some fun happened on the scam bus, met some legends. one guy at the service station was sat eating a subway sandwich he'd bought in bangkok. some guy walks up to him, looking pretty hungover and rough dog, and was like "holy shit! did you buy that here?!". the guy who was enjoying his meat feast of a sarnie was like "yeah man, just round the corner!". the rest of us look at each other then as "subway boy" runs off to find is fodder, we ask him if that's his pal. "nah, never seen him before in my life!!!". god knows what happened to subway boy, he certainly didn't get back on our bus, hopefully he was on the other scam bus. oh, and for the record, i didn't see one subway the whole time i was in cambodia.

the latter part of the journey was spent with the whole bus yelling in unison "SCAM BUS!" at the driver and also chatting to a (different) and cute japanese boy. romance beckons (ha, as if!), although the major problem was, as always, the inevitable language barrier. he spoke barely any english, me even less japanese. so we're sat shaking hands trying to teach each of our native tongues, smiling at each other. i wrote it all down phonetically in my book, "kinkydescar" means how are you, i think, and i was trying to explain what the word kinky meant in english and to be careful when to say it! tumble weed blew past... well, he asked me what my name was and he wrote it in japanese in my book with his name underneath. it was like being 14 again. ahhh!

so we made it to siem reap after 8/9ish. myself, the mancs and three other guys comandeer some tuk tuks and make way to the garden village which we'd all been recommended. devoid of casa del crack and three of us $16 richer than the others...

more bus journeys of woe and heartbreak

2009-09-20T19:31:00.000-06:00

it started with a kiss...

we made it to inle lake after recharging our batteries in the wonderful $4 guesthouse in kalaw. hot water was much appreciated as we were high up in trekking-ville and i was suddenly coming down with a bloody cold.

inle lake was one of the most superbly relaxed settings ever. we stayed in the cheap end of town that most travellers end up resting in, aka nyaungshwe and were fortunate, thanks to the heads up from a swiss girl we met for one night in mandalay, to stay at the aquarius inn, an absolute gem of a find and without a doubt the friendliest staff in the world (bar the motherland inn II in yangon!) and hands down the best breakfast ever. i commended the guys on their spanish tortilla, i mean, it was as if i'd bought it from a high brow restaurant in madrid. the guy chuckled when i asked how he learned it and he said a spanish traveller taught him it! i am a total dairy fiend and in burma most, if not all, accommodation comes with free breakfast (HURRAH!) which is fucking A as it was the one meal a day where i got runny egg sunny side up and a bloody good black coffee. at the aquarius one day you got unlimited amounts of pancakes, tortilla the next and then came egg day! poached, i'll have you know. as much coffee you can drink and job's a good'un.

we didn't much at inle lake. the weather flittered between monsoon and searing heat. i managed to read stephen fry's autobiography and nathalie indulged in some murakami. we met and chatted with some interesting folk and we basically recharged our batteries after the battering from the bus ride. i sneezed my way through the three days thanks to the blasted cold and we were lucky that the day we decided to go out on inle lake, was beautiful weather. spent the day on a long boat taking in the immense surroundings.

so time was starting to close in on us. pretty gutting to know we were on our last leg of burma's days. two weeks really isn't enough time. but two weeks is better than none, that's for sure.

our taxi broke down en route to the bus. this is the petrol station we broke down in front of!

so my last encounter on burmese buses was from inle lake back down to yangon. we asked around for advice and our thoughts were confirmed. it's not a bad ride, most of it is on a good, newly built motorway, if you can call it that, but the first four hours involved going back on ourselves toward thazi aka the land of breakdowns, windy roads, misery and torment! oh, we also met a dutch guy in inle lake who arrived a day after us. apparently the bus i mentioned that decided to take a detour was still sat in the river when he passed it almost 24hrs later. christ knows how long we'd've been stuck there if we didn't charter that bus.

for some reason when locals board buses in asia they seem to take their life's possessions with them. boxes and boxes of shit. everywhere. animals, bags, food, you name it.

so we set off destination yangon on our last epic journey in burma. paid an extra $5 for an air con recliner, baby. the woman in front of me was sat with her son and husband, on two seats, yeah. unfortunately the local roads were too much for her and she got a bout of the old travel sickness. unfortunately for myself, this woman decided to relocate away from her seat her and her family were on and station herself next to me, in the aisle, along with a cool box filled with fuck knows what. her travel sickness worsens as the roads get bumpier. the woman moans, groans and whenever the bus is hurled round another corner she kept grabbing onto my knee for support! one thing i forgot to mention that is the woman decided to stow her four poly bags full of yom next to my feet. seriously, are you for fucking real?

i don't remember much of the journey apart from it being ridiculously cold, me trying not to let my feet touch the bags of sick that were well within my perimeter of personal space,more air con blasting out in full glory and me wrapped in my minnie mouse jumper and two longis! we got into yangon in the early early hours, got in a taxi and headed straight to home from home. we arrived at the motherland inn II before the air asia flight and were surprised and honoured that the israeli guy we met two nights prior had actually forewarned them of our arrival and booked us in! we arrived to zaw zaw, ei tuh and the crew running out and giving us hugs. more cries of "beautiful teacher/sister/friend" and i spent the last 24hrs in burma sat with them, went to a tea shop with zaw zaw, chatted incessantly over our experiences and promising i'll be back with more time so i can go round with zaw zaw and get to see more of the wonderfully screwed up and generous land. we then spent the last evening sat outside meeting a mad mixture of (friendly and fun!) esl teachers who'd somehow ended up in burma teaching. seemingly teaching the rich and elite in a private school on the outskirts of town. i pried into it, tried to gauge their opinion on where they were working and what their opinions of it was when there's bludgeoning poverty and lack of education everywhere. all i could make of it was that it was evidently the government and political elite's whippersnappers they were teaching and they didn't seem to have much of an opinion on it except that it was cheaper to stay in a guesthouse for six months than rent an apartment where the government wanted something like a six month's rent up front in one go...

bus journeys of love and doom

2009-09-18T23:33:00.000-06:00

i've decided i should make a bloody zine on bus journeys in asia.

you'll find that the main hub of ridiculous experiences and patter when travelling around asia tends to revolve around bus journeys. they are the absolute pandemonium of carnage and seeing the amount of time you spend sat on your arse, the idiots, legends and total eye openers you meet and see, it's no wonder long distance buses are home to the more obscure and often ridiculous story.

in vietnam, on my first asian bus between hanoi and hue, there was that guy who decided that he should take up a seat and a half and being the true brit i am, feeling too awkward and polite to ask him to close his fucking legs (really, though) , he then decided to take me on the guided tour of hue via is mobile phone and showing me pictures of fish, fish, more fish and a temple. trying to look as interested as possible, whilst slyly slipping a diazepam in my mouth, he then proclaims, upon seeing i have a mobile with a local network (we call this roaming back home, innit) "oh you have a vietnamese phone! give me your number!". i turn and say "not a chance!", asking why all i could muster up was that i "don't like giving my mobile out to men i don't know"... while all this was going on i could hear two people pissing themselves laughing behind me. these two people i'd never met until this journey, one of which became our travelling companion right down to mui ne, a total legend and good friend now!

there was that other bus ride of doom which after something like three hours rattling up the road without stopping, we finally get to a service station. oh, yeah. toilets are locked on buses in vietnam. speculations rose as to why. i reckon the WC is rammed full of drugs. i've heard other stories of people doing the laos - vietnam bus ride. holy fucking shit now there's a journey i haven't done and haven't heard one good thing about. one pal nearly got scammed by the woman who pretty much stole her bus money from her, then came back five minutes later nonplussed and asking for her money. i then heard that the said woman lay down next to my pal as she was trying to sleep, put her hands round her head as if to yawn or stretch out, and then she found the woman unzipping her bag that was under her head! the guys i went to thailand with told me they had to spend 24 hours in a bus sat on top of fertiliser. the list could go on.

well we made it to the service station and a group of us start heading to the loos. now i am known to be for leisurely toilet time, but these things you've gotta let pass when travelling round s.e asia. that's fine! well as i walk towards the toilets, which i can only stress that that word is used in the loosest term possible, i can smell the carnage before i witnessed the horror! i get there to find a concrete wall with a gutter running underneath it. there're no squats nor cubicles. instead, there's the aforementioned concrete wall, lit up like blackpool tower and four vietnamese women having a slash against the wall, FACING ME! that was that, no way was i getting involved in that sordid escapades! give me a bush, truck or dark corner any day! so myself, with the help of becky and two israelis we met and travelled with, combine forces, find a spot behind a massive truck and take turns to keep look-out, wee and once i'm done i run back to warn the driver that there was three girls en route! i had an inkling he was ready to do one before the others were finished.

the other thing about vietnamese buses is the sleeper bus. our first ride wasn't on the infamous "sleeper" but we had it from hue right the way down to saigon. it's really odd, you get on and it's like bunk beds, but like hospital beds, lined up right to the back. your feet goes in what i can only describe as hamster cages and sometimes the bed is half your body size length wise.

so back to burma. i have to say, my first real and proper experience of asian bus torture hadn't really started until our ride from bagan to inle lake. i always sympathised with others who had to go through with the laos to vietnam bus ride of hell and i felt my only ride that came close was the fucking horrific ride from the arse end of space in saigon down to phu quoc island.

well the night before we were to leave for inle lake we met an alaskan called kyle, who i later met in cambodia, who had done the journey in reverse. his words were that it was "horrific". we all laugh at him saying it really couldn't be that bad, others had been in the chicken buses in india, yadda yadda. i think we were kidding ourselves on, to be honest.

we got on the bus at around 03.30am. i must stress it was a mini bus in the loosest terms. the six of us were the only foreigners on the bus. let's just we'd boarded the most local bus and looked like aliens had been dropped. none of us could actually get our asses to fit on the seat. i'm serious. our entourage included people of all shapes and sizes, none of us petite enough to squeeze into the miniature seats we were slumped on. we'd only had about three hours sleep and we got onto this mini bus with the sudden panic of what we were gonna have to go through over the next 16 hours. first off, there was the most mind blowingly irritating music blasting out of the front. secondly, there wasn't enough room on the bus for everyone. where were they all to go? well some sat on the smallest plastic stools imaginable and the rest had to sit on the roof. the road between bagan and inle lake is without a doubt one of the bumpiest and windiest roads i've seen. now it was a struggle to sleep, i won't lie. i opted for 3 valium and apparently was quite entertaining and chatting shit for a good few hours after sleeping, probably managed an hour or two kip time, but spent the rest of the time bobbing up and down trying to get some feeling back into my arse and legs. downside to not having a big bum and it being bony is that these long journeys can be irritating as hell.

look at all the happy faces!

breakdown #1 happened round near a place called thazi. now am not good at mechanics and have never fixed anything on my car except when i managed to knock the wing mirror off when driving from newcastle to my home town when ridiculously hungover, but i know that if the rear suspension of a bus has gone that the solution to fixing it ISN'T by hammering a plank of fucking wood over it. uh-oh.

well we plough on and come along comes breakdown #2. now at least it wasn't ourselves that were involved in the breakdown, strictly speaking. like tim, a graduate in engineering and also, from what i heard, a guy who fears very little. i could tell that their methods of fixing the suspension wasn't too hot and i even heard him mention that the bus could topple at any opportunity... well, thankfully it didn't, but our second breakdown happened somewhere between thazi and kalaw, up the windiest, steepest road. let;s say we're heading up towards jungle territory and down in the valley there's a lake, or ditch. well this massive truck broke down. no-one could move it as it was laden down with bricks, bricks and more bricks. now here rolls in the entertainment. nose to tail of traffic and the trucks waiting for a part to be brought from thazi, we're still two hours from where tim, sarah and ellen were headed and three to four hours from inle lake, which is where nathalie and i were destined. i decided to climb on top of our bus to witness the carnage that was about to unfold. so instead of waiting patiently, like every other bleeder on the road, a mini bus, not too dissimilar from our own decides to make a "detour" and go down a dirt track to dodge the truck that was blocking the road. guess what? he ended up in the fucking valley. now another van decided not to learn from the predecessors mistake and to run to its aid. seriously, i don't think you're gonna be able to tow the other knacker out the river. oh, and as this was all happening, i must add that the monsoons decided to open and the weather quickly shifted from 40 degrees plus to torrential rain.

we were saved by some gibroni who we thought we'd bartered and chartered his bus with. well, we should thank him for his noble gestures. considering we were getting soaked, we were crabby and my enthusiasm was officially starting to wain, we paid him $3 each to get us the hell out of there as his bus was on the other side of the broken down truck. we get on, there's about ten people on board and we thought we'd chartered it to get us to kalaw asap. oh now, this is where the guy started touting for more business and the driver couldn't speak any english. so time passes, we're all starting to get a bit fucked off that the $30 wasn't enough to get us out of there and to make it even worse, the locals that clambered on with their worldly possessions only paid 1000 kyat each ($1).

nathalie and myself opted to get off at kalaw and rest, eat and not endure the final two hour ordeal to inle lake until the following day. when we got off at kalaw we found that when our chartered bus set off all our bags got completely caked in mud and rain as the back door wasn't shut properly. thank fucking god my camera and valuables were in my day bag!

mandalay - bagan; the stories begin!

2009-09-15T03:14:00.000-06:00

how to tie a longyi, demonstrated by sunny.

we spent a few days checking out what mandalay had to offer. it was your typical asian city, although not in the built up sense, rather in its dirty, dusty and humid sense. still recuperating from my bouts of irregular bowel movements, i had a few days to do so with our boat not leaving for bagan on the wednesday.

mandalay offered us the opportunity to get to know some locals, learn more about the country through them and be offered more unlimited wealth of generosity and hospitality. once again i felt stung by our two week time frame. a tri-shaw driver, who i can only describe as his english being nothing short of BBC standard. sunny, his name is. i asked him where the hell he learned english and he retorted in a coy, yet with sharp humour, that he's learned from meeting tourists, like ourselves, and has a good friend who works for none other than the BBC! apparently this reporter has been to burma on countless occasions to write up on the country and he's helped translate texts for him. it was ace spending time with him and his pal, finding out and discussing their land. i've made a vow that when i go back to burma, he's gonna drive me around the north of the country. zaw zaw will help me discover the southern parts and we'll road trip our way through places that are more "off the beaten track", although this phrase seems pretty redundant in a country like burma. there's hardly any tourists whatsoever, especially compared with the stereotype of tourist/backpacker you meet in vietnam. what i really noticed is that the people you meet in burma, myself not included, are exceptionally well travelled, especially in places like the middle east, nepal, india and mongolia. the people you meet seem more chilled and low-key. i like it a lot, it's the type of country even though is stunning, is made ten times better by the warmth and generosity of the locals. burma is one of the poorest countries i've ever been to, but on the flipside you don't have the constant hassle that you see in cambodia. dealing with poverty for someone who's been born and raised in rural, middle class suburbia in northumberland is something that's prevalent and constantly in the back of your mind. in cambodia and i guess quite rightly so kids come up to and say "you're from england? wow, you're rich, all people from england are rich" and when you laugh and in jest say "not a chance, have you SEEN my bank statement?!...i'm unemployed!...yadda yadda". we'll come to cambodia in a bit, but the poverty in burma is far worse. the gap between rich and poor is obviously prevalent; for instance the government have their thumb on everything. but in cambodia the gap between rich and poor stems even from street sellers to the politically elite. what i found in burma was that where you were from didn't matter to them in a sense of "oh, so you MUST be rich", more importantly "OH, SO DO YOU SUPPORT MANCHESTER UTD!!!!" or "AHH UK, GOOD FOR FOOTBALLLLL!". the people, like i've mentioned before are just thankful that people want to visit their country and speak to them. they don't wanna mither you from morning to night for you money, they're not pushy in the slightest, which compared to cambodia was a complete contrast. i guess before i went i presumed (now there's a word and action i hate to use) that burma would hold some kind of hassle from begging. maybe because the people are so warm and open that's what makes it sadder and worse? you get to know them and feel frustrated like you can't even imagine at what's going on around them by the junta. you've got to remember as well that the trial of aung san suu kyi took place a week before we arrived. when we got to burma we heard of some tourists asking a taxi driver to stop while they took a picture of a pro-democracy poster. rumour has it that that taxi driver was taken away for a few days by the police. when i mentioned in the previous post don't be inconsiderate i really meant it. act willfully and don't jeopordise the locals. on one occasion i did notice that i was being followed, possibly out of boredom from the police's side, but nothing more than them following me for ten or fifteen minutes. i guess they're probably not used to tourists and want to make sure we're not going to try bring down the government from the inside in one deftly stroke! speaking of which, check this out:

one thing we found out is that the junta actually makes a loss for every letter or postcard that's sent. it cost me 5cents to send either a postcard or a letter and it's well known they are making a loss. don't ask me why or how, but they are. so we feverishly buy as many naff postcards as poss between us and get them sent back to europe. ha, up yours junta!

we set off at another ungodly time for boarding public transport, this time on the slow boat to bagan. this was to set off at 3am and take abother infamous 16hr ride to our destination. an absolutely incredible way to travel and my favourite thus far in burma! i managed to knock in a few hour's sleep on the wooden floor and only wake up when the fog horn of death blasted out to let us know we'd arrived at another village or port. on the way to the toilet holland (nathalie's new dubbing) and ellen were sat talking to a couple, one of which we met when handing over our passports as we boarded the bus, cracking jokes that he was a drug dealer and works for the media, the latter which we later found out to be true, and thank fucking god the officials didn't catch on to these jokes when our passports were being handed over! well you know it's gonna be a good friendship when you're calling someone a drug dealer the first time you meet them at 3.30am. well when i was off to indulge in more wonderful asian squatter toilets on the boat - this time involving a typical squat loo with no trof or container, just a drop straight into the bloody river- i walked past the aforementioned couple and cottoned on to the woman's accent pretty quick. i asked where she was from and the conversation follows as such:

me: "where is it that you're from?"

sarah: "newcastle".

me: "i bloody gathered that, where abouts in the north east are you from?!"

sarah: "i'm actually from northumberland!"

me: "yeah man, i got that too, where the hell are you from?"

sarah, whilst laughing: "stakeford!"

to which i could only reply in true katie kennedy fashion as "no fucking way, i'm from morpeth!!!". for any of youse that haven't been to the hyem land or know what i'm talking about, we're literally talking about a place that's roughly four miles from my home town. what a very fucking small world this is fast becoming.

we made it to bagan two hours ahead of schedule, paid our $10 entrance fee to get into the city of bagan and the six of us, with our new travel companions, scoot off on the back of a rickshaw to find some suitable cheap and clean accommodation. success!

the next few days were amazing. bagan was a definite highlight for me. i rented a push bike at $1 a day from the guesthouse and got to explore the vast amounts of temples on a bloody bike! those who know me know that i'm one of the biggest bike nerds ever. in manchester i cycle everywhere, am known to perv on other peoples' bikes and always feel like someone's dumped me when i get a flat tyre etc. ha. those who don't know me that well, well there you are, i've a real penchant for road bikes, well any kind of bike, so the opportunity to cycle in burma warmed my cockles greatly!

we managed to come across some final of a footy tournament outside one of the main pagodas on the port. it was immense to watch. apparently the winning team's name literally translated as "the boozers!" and some epic celebrations followed. whenever they scored people were doing backflips and drums were being hammered! fucking awesome to be part of!

on day one of the temple mission i went off with a guy called mark who we met whilst travelling about the country. now i'm quite renown for giving people banter and giving people shit (in jest!). well, one of the more mental stories i've come away with from my asian adventures happened to take place in bagan. i was outside one of the first pagodas we came to and two kids were outside trying to sell me postcards or be my guide for the day. the usual banter about football (soccer) ensues and i was like "reet, i've nae cash, but how about instead of you being my guide we all play a game of footy tomorrow!". so it was decided 3 vs 3 and to meet outside the temple at 9am. brilliant! all night i was talking feverishly with the others about how i haven't played footy in ages and was well looking forward to it. discussing whether it'd be a bamboo ball and whether or not it'd sabotage my feet apart. yeah, you get the picture. so the next day i end up sleeping in. not by much mind, and as myself, ellen and holland were eating our breakfast and trying to pump our bodies full of as much caffeine as possible, ellen asks, while pointing, if the kid on the wall opposite was the one i was supposed to be playing football with. sure enough, there was chico. first thing, that's the name he gave me. secondly he repeatedly went on about how he was 17. guys, he looked fucking 12. well that's by the by anyway cos all that happened was i was an hour late for our game of bloody footy. oh, how wrong could i have been!

so i run outside and start apologising to the kid for sleeping in and that'd we'd meet him in an hour by the pagoda. oh no, he had a different idea for football! next thing i know this, shall i say, "minor" starts saying "no, no come alone. i'm hungry!" i presume this his queue for money or wanting me to buy a crap picture. oh how wrong could i have been! he then goes on to say "all we need is 30mins. i'm a man -i'm 17- you're a woman, we have needs (?!?!), i wait long time for you, i'm hungry for your sex, no money!". HOLY-FUCKING-SHIT! alarm bells start ringing and i start screaming at myself in my head for being so bloody stupid. how the fuck did i manage to mistake football for sex. that's a euphemism i'd never heard before. or call be outright naive! nathalie and ellen witnessed the events unfold from the balcony of our guesthouse. apparently i was stood there, arms going wild, shouting "NO NO NO NO NO! NO MONEY, NO FOLLOW, NO WAIT, NO SEX, JUST GO!" but obviously laughing, cos let's be honest, only i could get myself into such a ridiculous situation. like, seriously.

the minor in question. 17 my fucking arse!

so the rest of our time in bagan was spent having the shit ripped out of me by the others. innuendos for football and sex thrown in my face and then being dubbed the "glitter" of burma. bloody hell! last thing i wanted was any allegations of meddling with minors. imagine what the junta would have to say about that!

well bagan was incredible all round. i loved spending my days exploring the temples at my own pace and our evenings absolutely degenerated into inane ramblings with the others. you know you've met some ace people when the conversation revolves around boobs, sex, ripping the others constantly and sheer abuse. good fucking times!

the road to man-da-lay

2009-09-09T00:59:00.001-06:00

our bus to madalay was to leave at three in the afternoon so i spent the morning pottering around with two people i met from the guesthouse and putting my already pathetic haggling skills to the test. i'm getting there with it, but it takes time! managed to buy a longyi which is the burmese traditional dress. both men and women wear longyis and they're pretty comfy and really practical. also managed to buy the world's crappest selection of postcards for places that i knew i wasn't even going to visit in burma. the selection was dire and he wouldn't just sell me one -of a temple i knew i was gonna see!- but i guess seeing as i'm totally inept with postcard writing it sums me up well.

our first of many bus journeys in burma was a total breeze in comparison to what was to come. it really wasnt all that bad, just long, annoying departure and arrival times and fucking sub-zero temperatures with the aircon blasting out full. my minnie mouse jumper simply wasn't enough to fend off the brute force of the aircon. we didn't get into mandalay until around 4 or 5am. you can probably guess what's coming next but i decided to play it deviant to make the next 16 hours entertaining, not only for myself, but apparently also for others to see! at least it helped me block out the four hour long epic soap opera-cum-musical-cum-young romance that was never to be. tense stuff!

one good thing about buses in burma is that the driver won't mind stopping the bus if you need a wee. some dude was obviously needing to go, at which at this point i was nearly full to bursting but too polite to ask to stop, so i took the opportunity to relieve my bladder of multitudes of water by clambering off the bus in an excited and yeah floaty manner and quickly looking around at our surroundings to scope out my dark, secluded spot to mark my territory on. a-ha! just to my left were some big road signs, the ones that work men put up, but they look damn perfect for me to fit behind! so off i run to go relieve myself of my weak bladder and as one leg's hoisted over a bloody ballard and as i'm about to make my 'leap of faith' i hear cries from ellen and the driver and a torch been shone in my direction. shit, i'm buggered, i thought they were doing this because i'd managed to offend the driver for choosing a spot so close to the bus, so i quickly dart my eyes below me and realise that the reality of the situation was that i was mid-motion ready to jump over a bollard and fall down a massive ketamine sized hole/ditch into the ground. put it this way, if my right leg made it over i probably would've lost a limb somewhere along the line!

our second stop involved a service station just after a government check point. i was stood a wee bit bleary eyed sharing a cigar with a monk while he translated the menu for me. i then got my scran material and proceeded to munch down a candle lit dinner that clocked in at under $2. one thing to point out, this was probably one of the best burmese meals i ate on the whole trip. now people who know me know i'll eat pretty much anything, i'm not a fussy eater and not vegan etc well, burma turned me vegetarian for two weeks. the gastronomy, much to my dismay, really wasn't all that. more on this later.

so we got to mandalay at the dark and early depths of the morning and slept like utter bastards until we roused. burma's travel times knocked my body clock well out of sync and as a result, towards the end of my trip, i was going to bed at 10pm everynight and getting up around 5.30am!

ellen had been quite ill for the last day or so. i'm presuming a bout of 24hr bug or food poisoning. not cool when you've got to sit on a bus for what feels ike an eternity. sometimes i wonder about myself. i tempt fate too much and following on from the previous day's "ï haven't phyisically thrown up in two years" proclamation guess who gets lumped with a bout of the old sickness and ugh. i kept thinking it was ços my body didn't know what was happening after thailand. in thailand i was drinking changs every day for two weeks solid. my meal intake went from a normal, perhaps even, stable diet, to one meal a day plus some fruit for breakfast if i could stomach it. decided in burma to quite the pop for two weeks and on the opening ceremony of said drink free katie, i pop a multi vitamin tablet and alas! i then come down with fucking severe stomach cramps and sickness. not cool. this only lasted for 24hrs though, thank god. when youre somewhere like burma every day, minute and moment is to be savoured and not spent either in bed feeling dog rough or spent walking around looking at things and really not having your heart in it, due to feeling dog rough!

the day before the sickness came down we met some woman outside the palace who offered to take us up to the pagoda on top of mandalay hill. we curtailed the entrance fee thanks to her, and that involved going up the back way to avoid government officials and only making it half way up. it was all good though. we opted to have her take us round the surrounding villages, monastries and towns tyhe next day thanks to her generosity. my enthusiasm was starting to wain due to the heat, dehydration and the fact i was constantly making a mental note of where the nearest toilet for security's sake. we had a good day though, avoided more govermnet fees by getting up at 6am and getting to certain pagodas before the officials were there (up the punx!). we then spent the rest of the day chilling, dodging the sun cos i was feeling crabby, moseying around the u bein bridge and watching people potter by on their daily errands and business.

i'll get photos put on on the next post. more of mandalay to come.

myanmar (burma)

2009-09-07T04:08:00.000-06:00

just to keep things flowing and a bit of regularity in this post, i'm going to refer to myanmar as burma from now on. it makes it easier when referring to "the burmese" or "burmese food" etc. either that or it's the brit inside of me, isn't it?

well, people keep asking me what burma's like, whether they should go, why the hell i went, why didn't i boycott the place? in an actual fact, the decision to go wasn't easy. it's somewhere i've always been fascinated with but the perpetual fight in my head was going on about going. whether or not to boycott, like some people suggest, or go see for my own eyes and try to make my money spread as far as possible and minimise at all opportunities how much goes to the military junta. the latter is more difficult than it sounds. well, it's easy if you don't mind taking unholy shleps of buses everywhere, not drinking etc but you've got to remember the visa fee goes straight to the junta, there's a $10 entry to bagan, $5 to enter the marvellous shwedagon pagoda in yangon, a $3 entry to inle lake, non-government run guest houses have to pay some sort of commission to the junta and then there's the $10 departure tax. the list could go on. some people, as we met on the road, couldn't live without a beer every night or flying from place to place.

i think if people were to ask whether or not to visit would depend wholly on the individual. your needs, creature comforts, your political views, your compassion and your willingness to take the time to talk to people. think hard. think hard and don't act like an inconsiderate westerner. for me, what i found from the moment i landed that talking to the locals was one of the most heart warming experiences ever. not just for me, but for them. they simply can't get over the fact tourists want to come to their wonderful land.

first impressions when riding from the airport to the motherland inn II guesthouse was thoughts racing thinking,. this is like nowhere ive ever been. yangon (rangoon) looked and reminded me of'a hybrid havana, cuba and what i can picture india to be like. old cars scuttle past you. we've landed into the land of toyota corollas, baby. one thing that struck us was the lack of motorbikes, which was odd for an asian country. i didn't realise this until speaking later with a friend we met and travelled with called ellen, that motorbikes are actually banned in the country's capital due to a government offical's wife (i'm presuming the president) being hit by one. seriously, though.

being on a tenuous two week time frame meant we had to make some kind of plan as to where and when we wanted to leave. transport, as we soon found out, is excruciatingly slow and the recuperation time after wards even more so. myself and my dutch travelling companion, nathalie, along with ellen from leeds, decided to leave the next day for mandalay and get the wheels in motion, so to speak. our bus was to leave at 3pm and to take 16hrs. we'll come to that in a bit!

we landed really early on friday 21st august (there's a date i can remember! i'm working on it!!) and decided to head straight to the most obviously and mind blowing landmark in town and that i've ever seen, the shwedagon pagoda. simply marvelling in its beauty and overwhelming presence took hours. i wandered aimlessly taking it all in. one of the most peaceful and breathtaking things ever (yet to see the angkor wat, that's on its way!).

the evening was spent talking to the other travellers that had landed and were soon to depart. more importantly for me spending time with the folk that work at the motherland inn II was what wrapped me up in the bubble of joy that is the over-welcoming and generous nature of the burmese people. people run up to you with a smile and a wave. not ços they want you to buy something or mither you for your lame ass dollar bill (the most hassle free country i've been to thus far), more cos they actually want to talk with you. on day one i found myself teaching english to six of the people working there, upon response i had one girl named ei tun shouting "beautiful teacher!" whenever i came downstairs and have them touching my hair in sheer delight that it wasn't a bloody perm! i don't think they could get over the fact i didn't mind sitting with them for a few hours, trying to harbour the importance of, for instance, "tomorrow i'm going..." over "tomorrow i am going". trying incessantly with my heart and pride to make them contract the words and better their already amazing english. in vain, i reckon. this is where my real geekiness and love for linguistics comes out. i actually get so into it i forget what's going on. i really should think properly about becoming a teacher, like.

to follow, will be more epic bus journey tales, words of brief sickness and our time spent in mandalay and then onwards!

the songserm travelogues: part I

2009-09-07T00:56:00.000-06:00

okay, well if we're gonna be anally retentive about it, it's actually vol III of the songserm travelogues, but let's skip over that minor blip!

travelling in thailand involves a lot of waiting around between modes of transport and in the blazing sun. once we were dumped off the overcrowded ferry with our bags, some total gibroni emerges who thinks he's got the ultimate power by shouting orders, ie destinations, and pointing in random directions whilst blowing a whistle. give a man a whistle, eh? so i was sat in the blazing heat and met three lads and got chatting. two of them are from london and i've absobloodylutely no idea how we came onto it, but it appears that george is my doppelganger in every shape and form when it comes to music and the sesh. i think grouper and type records is how it got started, and it seems everything from slint, to flylo and lukid, to drone, to godspeed and we've covered all our tastes and what not. pretty refreshing after you've heard nothing bu ub40 or that "hold up, roseanna-anna" tune for two weeks solid. it was also funny to see they were real sticklers for sedatives as much as i was. this journey was gonna be fun!

now i must stop and say that bus journeys in thailand really aren't that bad at all (especially compared to vietnam and just wait 'til we come to burma's roads...) it's just the waiting, like i said, in between that can be utterly arduous. mutterings of "will our bus ever come?" are exchanged but once on it, it's generally a breeze, comfy and aircon ahoy. i've decided i should make a bloody zine about the antics, legends and nutters i've encountered on asian buses. once again, just you wait 'til we get to burma!

the trip from the south islands involves I.D in the form of a sticker slammed on your chest to differentiate you and your bag from people heading, say, to the andaman coast. the company songserm generally caters for your average student-cum-fullmoon-revellers and the boats of generally at three times the capacity. the trip itself was a breeze, i was sedated and had my beautiful brain melting playlist to keep me content so that was me sorted 'til we arrived back into the city of broken dreams, bangkok.

i concur that if i ever die on khao san road, then i know i must've done something seriously wrong in the last 23 years. it's absolutely fucking horrendous there. one of the pluses i have to give it (and soi rambuttri, which is now my "preferred" kipping places in this end of town) is that you're without a doubt able to get a cheap, clean-ish room at any time of the day. we rolled in at 5.30am and opted for a chang and another 5mg before sleep. always fun watching the lads trying to fend of prostitutes when we're sat in a bar at that time.

i managed to make my flight to chiang mai in plenty of time. chiang mai itself is really pretty and really bloody cheap. i was able to get a bed in "same same"(good grief) for 100baht which is just under two quid. i have to say, it was the roughest bed ive ever slept on, i'm sure it was just a sheet over fucking springs, but it did the job.'i booked myself onto a trek through julie's. julie's seems to be the preferred kip space for travellers. they don't take bookings and alas! they were full.

funny things happen in this world. as i was climbing into bed this (rather beautiful) french chap (who, once again i can't remember the name of, let's call him sebastian for argument's sake) was saying he'd found somewhere better, cleaner and for the same price if i wanted to move tomorrow. fuck! i was already booked on a bloody trek! he was in town doing a massage course and when i woke he was rousing too and i heard the words "would you mind me practicing a massage on you this morning?" come flowing my way. what a bloody silly question! problem number two arises. we're both having to be in separate places in half an hour and we didn't realise this until we'd sorted our shit out. whack. although i don't seem to have done too bad on this trip and have no complaints thus far, it does pretty much sum me and my general luck up to a tee! welcome to the world of kenners. ha.

the trek itself was OK. i'm really, really, totally not one for group tourist-trap packages, and this was me walking straight into one. the elephants got treated like shit and it really broke my heart to see it. one younger elephant looked distressed the whole time then at the end just went mental and started charging at a dog. i don't fucking blame it, if you ask me.

the trek was beautiful, mind. the humidity and sweat factor, wasn't! luckily for me i wasn't the only one who felt that i was shedding layers of skin in the heat. met two awesome people, alex and harry, on the trek and here comes the infamous french english divide! well, all the others were french, we don't speak any french, and alas, the group was instantly split. shitter.

the following day was much better in my eyes, but that's cos i got to be a kid and get in a raft and go down some tepid rapids. ha ha.

back to chiang mai and a quick turn around, picking up of laundry and i'm on a night bus back to bangkok. no battery on ipod and no Vs and i'm sat next to a total redneck from iowa who just wouldn't stop talking to me. more frustratingly he talked really slow and didn't really have anything interesting to say except that pai (somewhere near chiang mai) was full of hippies and pot. people who know me know i have a good tolerance for people. i love meeting people and i love lending an ear to hear new things. if they're annoying, i don't mind. i normally find it amusing and play on it. more importantly i fucking adore people with good stories to tell, or who give people the time of day. well i'm sorry mum and dad for letting you down but on this occasion i had to go against my kindness and goodwill and feign tiredness and pretended to sleep most the way just to get him to shut up! all i remember of him is that he looked like michael moore and had a sweat band round his head. ha ha.

so, back to bangkok to await the arrival of nathalie and get stuff sorted for burma. first off epic sleep as it was another 6am arrival in the city of doom for me.

photos will follow when i can be arsed, loves!

salad days

2009-09-05T06:17:00.000-06:00

bloody shitting hell of a fury where do i begin!

okay, this blog has seemingly been left in the relics of salad days (i have minor threat running through my head as i type this). in haad salad, where i left around three weeks ago, i've managed to leave my camera charger, some skanky tees and a large portion of my heart and soul. in the words of a dear friend, "it was hard to leave" and boy is that right.

i'm gonna stop you right no and say that as cliche as it may sound, be prepared to hear inane scatterings of cliches. this holiday's been full of them, and in the best way possible. i wouldn't trade what i've seen, done and the complete legends i've got to know so dearly for any mountains or gold.

the mad winds in the evenings dropped and the humidity seared. week two saw me actually leave the dubious triangle i'd adopted and i even made it to thong sala on the back of colin's bike; popped over to "jack's bar" which is a cosy cavern that's owned by the same guy as my way, just one beach down; i revelled in the half moon party (we'll come to that in a bit!) and we also ventured to "reggae village" a couple of times during the beginning of koh phagnan's power out time. maybe i'm not so much a creature of comforts after all? ahem. let's just say these power outs weren't so bad when you're tanked up with four blokes deciding where we can get a chang and a bifter (these amenities are always at hand), it's more that feeling of hearing your fan tick off at 5am and suddenly it feels like someone's sucking all air out of your room and you start to feel like you're in a coffin! i had to kick my window open (to which my bed lay directly opposite and i don't fucking care who saw me lying there in my undercrackers) just to get any sniff of a breeze flow through my bungalow would do! apparently the island's power is distributed by koh samui, which seems damn sight stupid given the size difference and needs. as a result of uneven distribution and the sudden surge in 1000baht + accommodation which needs to cater for the air conditioning, satellite TV loving, fridge bearing yuppies that have seemingly flocked the south islands over the last few years. well, it's no wonder a small bay like haad salad sees darkness.

nothing stopped us though. these blackouts seemed a fitting opportunity to go to reggae village and sit in candle light and eat pizza. yeah, pizza came from somewhere. all i know is thomas came back with one with olives on and i then proceeded to go on THE biggest black sabbath rant about how much we just HAD to listen to the first four albums. no wait, that's a lie, the first three plus sabbath bloody sabbath. the others, including crazy irish pete, simon, some nameless irish man (sorry if you happen to be reading this, silver fox #2, i really can't remember your name), colin and thomas, didn't seem so enthusiastic about hearing all four sabbath albums. it was at that point when i realised i was talking way too much crap and really needed to depart and hit the hay. ha!

back on the power out theme of life. week two of haad salad was pretty different weather wise to week one. week one was pleasant, warm, sunny and in the evenings windy as hell. week two was the opposite. searing heat, ridiculous humidity; even more so in the evenings. putting on your suntan lotion was like rubbing soup onto your face. the plus of the no-wind factor, despite trying to avoid dehydration and burns, is i got to witness some of the most epic sunsets ever. queue katie's world tour of gibroni filled sunset music...

it had been decided given just how jaw dropping the sunset had been a few nights prior to the half moon (please excuse me, dates, days and things like that become meaningless when you're not working, even more so when you're on a beach. i work things by when a visa stamp expires, or when i have to be in a new place, or, in thailand's case, the half and full moon parties) that thomas and i was hijack some kayaks (no pun intended) and go see the sunset from the other side and ruin everyone else's fucking photos, as they all did to us whilst we were sipping our brewskis. it must've been a sight for sore eyes. one kayak with a mop of what's now become unkempt, unruly curly hair (IT'S NOT A PERM!) and a tall, gangly silver fox in the other. unfortunately there's no photographic evidence of these two illustrious figurines on the horizon, though when we came back to shore the dutch family we met, plus people in my way's bar were like "we just knew it was you two out there!!!" and yes, we were the only two out on the horizon. i have to say, the sunset beat the one the night before and what i love is that no two are ever the same. we timed it just right by heading out at 6pm, the sky turned an evanescent pink and red whilst piercing blue rays came creeping out from behind the clouds, which seemed to take on forms of mountains. what got me was the fact the sky and the sea mirrored each other; both turned metallic and we duly saw the sun sink behind the horizon whilst the red, blues and silver colours bounced off each other. and no, for the record, i wasn't on acid.

another strange encounter of what a bloody small world this place really is, was encounter number one (there are more to come!) whilst sat waiting for thomas before the aforementioned sunset. a canadian lass and her mum were sat next to me and we struck up conversation. the usual patter of where you're from etc and alas! she's been brought up in none other than manchester's gleam and glisten that is M21, pretty much round the corner from where i've lived and been hiding out invariably over the last few years. it also turns out she worked with one of my best and dearest friends rob, back when he worked at the metropolitan in west didsbury. it's a very fucking small world, after all. anyway, one thing lead to another, chat about canada and a few contacts exchanged and i'm now off to banff in september to see how many minds i can corrupt and carnage i can bring on. oh and employment, yeah savings and money are starting to dwindle big time and i almost definitely need to be in employment by the end of september otherwise i'll be turning to a diet of marlboro lights until i can afford my scran!

let's move swiftly onto the half moon party. similary to the full moon, for those who are untrained in the ways of thailand's smash back opportunities, it's an excuse for a load of foreigners and some locals to get twatted and party until the wee hours of the morning. we had a new member to our army of pretty lame revellers (i mean, we weren't strong in numbers, but we were strong in other things!) and she goes by the name of gaya. i actually met gaya and her family whilst waiting for the boat back to koh phagnan from koh tao (see previous post) and funnily enough thy were headed to where i was returning. they got my appraisal and we combined taxi forces. anyway, gaya's family left a day earlier than she did so i offered if she wanted to come with, she could crash/dump stuff in my bungalow if she wanted to.

so the half moon party? well, it's in the jungle. i managed to lose everyone, my voice, the key to the bungalow, i went gay for ten minutes to get a taxi for a third of the price (no kissing, mind!) and it was on the way back to haad salad that i realised that i'd lost said key and the one responsibility i felt i had for the whole 6 or so weeks of travelling suddenly came clambering down like a ton of bricks. this lass is gonna miss her bloody ferry back to bangkok, thus missing her flight!!!!! i dunno how i did it, i only had four things in my purse. i managed to find thomas by his overtly green and orange fluro tee, he managed to find me by my hair, supposedly. well luckily for us, i'd left the window open (safety first). no sign of gaya, so thomas and i went to the beach for a smoke. well using his words he went to "twist one up" (not a euphemism for masturbation, which is what i first thought!) while i tried to fend off to fucking radge dogs that a) wanted to fight each other and bark sound inappropriately loud and b) follow me wherever i wanted to pop my bottom down. well as our smoke and distant lights from the boats on the horizon suddenly started to burn out, i decided to see if my temporary sleeping companion had returned. the final result of the full moon wasn't your usual tales of smash back (glad to say i came away class A free again! go me). i did have some fluro paint on my arm, possibly from some sweaty gibroni who brushed by me, but i did wake to hear gaya swearing incandescently in dutch. now i speak german so i was able to get the jist of cuss words in dutch. gaya was supposed to be on the ferry back north at around 08:0/08:30 and she roused after nine. oh shit, man. my last mental image of her leaving was seeing her hoy her rucksack out of my window, climb over me, give me a hig, then jump out the window to get the next ferry outta koh phagnan. i really fucking hope she made her flight. all in all? the half moon party was a raging success, i'd say!

well leaving haad salad was the hardest thing ever. it took a while to get my arse in gear and make a decision. i'd left i quite late to get stuff sorted for visiting chiang mai and as a result had to scarper back on a sunday and venture up there on a cheap air asia flight. if i wasn't going to burma who knows where i would've ended up, or where i would've stayed...

well a lot happened in week two. misunderstandings of dialects were had from said yank. he still didn't get how colin (oz) and myself could understand each other as he really struggled with our dialects -more so mine. ha! our last night saw a return to jack's bar and a walk home armed with beer up steep roads and through isolated resorts hoping to hell it was salad beach. i saw my first ever firefly on this walk. i tell i lie, i saw two within ten minutes. i couldn't really believe my eyes. we wandered back to my way for our last drink at my way - albeit very drunk and a wee bit stoned -after bidding colin adieu. home from home. i absolutely deplore goodbyes at the best of time and i could see he was struggling to. was pretty poignant what he said to thomas. three totally, completely different people and we all bonded and got on like a house on fire. an absolutely wonderful evening and a total shame to see us all heading to different countries over the following few days. i don't care if this holiday's been a plethora of cliches, but the best fucking decision i ever made was walking out of that rut of a job and getting away.

creature comforts

2009-08-10T20:12:00.000-06:00

bangkok, for me, was a night of stress and a morning of errands. my first introduction to kao sam rd was seeing british tourists spewing on the street and another one yelling at the shop assistant in seven eleven about not having any beer left. managed to get my visa for burma (myanmar) sorted, though, so it's all go, go, go!

so i left for the south islands on the monday night and got here seven days ago exactly. on the same day we headed down (on bus/ferry) a plane headed to ko samui crashed. i didn't go near a computer or phone for three days. it's bound to happen when you cut yourself off from back home. on the way to koh phagnan met the lads on the ferry and started on the changs at 10.30am. that ferry from surat thani to koh phagnan was home to my first (and definitely not my last) chang. those bad boys start at 6.4% and apparently that's a "minimum" and they can go up to 10%. they're smooth and have a graceful kick! i'm converted back to beer after 3 yrs off.

i've been staying on koh phangnan. in particular, "haad salad" beach in the my way bungalows. it was arranged that myself and three guys i met in hanoi would spend three days here, see what the full moon party has to offer, then skedaddle. well, we ended up staying five, barely made it out of the dubious triangle from bungalow, to beach, to bar and then went our separate ways on sunday. i went to kho tao (divers paradise) to have a few days of relaxation. kho tao was full. i mean, overloaded with post-full moon revellers. everyone from koh phagnan seemed to be heading to this tiny island and hardly anyone was up for diving. problem arises, where's everyone gonna stay??! i got saved by this taxi guy who knew someone who was gonna let me stay on the roof of her bar. it was either that or pay 30 dollars for a room, that's a flight somewhere to me.

so let's start with the most recent and move back. i was sat on the beach in kho tao. wasn't warmly greeted by anyone that worked there, i seemed to be a massive pain in the arse to them, really. so as i was sat sipping on my chang and writing in my journal i heard ub40 come on. i suddenly had an epiphany and realised that if i'm gonna be on any beach to relax and have to hear ub40, i'd rather hear ub40 on haad salad with the radge regulars and ace guys who worked there, rather than on a beach full of couples and german families. i shit you not. kho tao was full of rules and regulations and i suddenly pined for haad salad. if it takes a shit band from birmingham to make you see the light, then fine by me!

so i'm back to my creature comforts. greeted with hugs and many a chang i've decided i may as well spend a few more days vegetating somewhere that i actually wanna be, rather than hopping from place to place.

last week lots of things were discussed a la renting a bike and exploring. you gotta realise, once you get chatting to the enigma of colin (the barren aussie who's almost definitely got a past shrouded in dodgy antics) and then there's thomas who when emerges for a few changs, declares, whilst swaying "boy, these changs are strong!", disappears for a few hours, reappears and so on... it's kinda hard to pull yourself away.

we did make it to the full moon party and reveled in it til around 7am. it was refreshing to be in the minority of people NOT smashed on class As or smothered in fluro body paint. we had fun though, i personally wouldn't go back as it was how i imagined it to be. the taxi ride was a definite highlight. some twatted irish lass pointing at al's facial adornment and going "i like your mushy!" to have him reply "try growing one yourself!". a few gibronis nearly caused a ruckus between them and the irish lot, but with dudley's grace and honour he managed to pipe that one down. she was totally bringing herself, mind! oh yeah, found out john hughes died somewhere in the process of me quaffing buckets (either or rum or gin). what a fucling tragedy. that guy's my hero.

when we rolled in at 8am pissed as fucking farts, dudley and i decided to go mither some blonde swedish girl who was sat out in the sea. after talking shite to her i then decided to take my shoes back and not realising how low the tide was, gauged three massive gashes into my left foot. it doesn't seem to want to heal, which is a fucker and a half. i guess now i've dropped anchor i don't need to walk far anymore!

the beach itself is shallow and turquoise. it's like a giant bath. the sand is white and soft and i don't have far to walk for anything. it's now easy to see why we never made it far out of the confines of haad salad.

so much has happened in the last week yet its all merged into one splurge of chang de la changs. chang o'clock duly starts at 14:300 prompt and ends when you can stumble back to the bungalow. we've heard endless ub40, tales from the locals who help prop the bar up, we've grown to love bobby and his entourage of workers, especially for his quips and one liners like: (pointing at me) "you me, me you, same same sing sing". that has to be a metaphor for something, i've just not quite worked out what yet! not forgetting those moments of panic when "will there, won't there be a storm" and having dylan's "shelter from the storm" come on. nothing could be more apt. this place is full of charms and that's why i've come back. samui's supposed to be like the costa del sol and tao, well, you know my views on kho tao!

i'll update this in the next few days with photos and more anecdotes. i feel that i could go on for hours about how amazing this little bay is, yet at the same time figure that the happenings here are just really one in-joke after another and that it'll bore everyone. either way, i'm full of vitamin D, relaxed and alive. this place is fucking rad and i don't wanna leave.

oh, and for the record, i still fucking hate UB40!

hasta luego, vietnam

2009-08-02T11:50:00.000-06:00

three weeks of mischief, fending off street sellers, pineapple sellin' gibronis who are armed with meat cleavers, motorbikes and humidity.

it's now time to conquer new lands, starting with thailand...

a wee present to myself:

uncle ho, you've been a dear friend...

"hue are you going?" (ahem)

2009-07-30T07:35:00.000-06:00

strange things are afoot!

we made it to phu quoc island. that jewel of turquoise beauty i'd longed for since living in south manchester! it lies south west of vietnam, close to cambodia, and we entailed the most horrific bus and ferry ride ever to get there. a taxi picked us up from district 1 in saigon, took us to casa del crack on the shady, shady suburbs of town (imagine being dumped in the remote parts of ancoats) with men shaking their hands - in the "jazz hands" fashion - at you when you ask questions or simply don't want to know, while i point at buses bearing the same name as the company we're booked through, my bus ticket, with a desperate look of despair, whilst they merely shrug, or shake their hands back at me. we're then shoved into a transit van to which we, the unlucky three, are shooed to the back, with no leg rom, no recline and our fucking backpacks underneath us. it was pretty sombre, whilst we witness the remaining 11 members of our transit fully reclined and kipping like kings! we then arrive into a shady port called rach gia at 5am, after the bumpiest ride of our life. confronted with six vietnamese guys trying to get us, plus our hefty backpacks on the back of their motorbike, we find comfort in three spaniards and one austrian bloke who were in a similar position, trying to end off these piranahs and find refuge in a boat, or a floor to sleep on!

somehow we manage to make it to the port, where we have to wait three hours for the ferry to phu quoc. i put on my playlist of 77 ambient tunes, which was constructed on a 14hr valium ride somewhere between hue and nha trang, and next thing i know i'm fast asleep on a marble floor indulging in the best three hours sleep in over 24 hours!

we're staying in bungalows on long beach, resident dogs on my deck chair and all is god in the world. the three of us, plus an aged french traveller (totally righteous dude whose been to so many places and used to travel back in the sixties) get on motorbikes and hunt out this mysterious and elusive beach the few who are in the know rave about: bai sao. will it be as good as people make out??! fuck yes. white sands, calm waters, solitude, lush mountains, "squeaky" sand (yes, there i said it) and we lay content knowing that we'd made it to arguably one of the best beaches in the world. only contender for me so far (thailand's to come) is the remote one we dug out in cuba.

gush

so we arrive back and there's a meat cleaver on my veranda... cogs start turning. back when we were in nha trang, which is one of the worst places i've ever been to, akin to benidorm or the costa del sol -high rises, dirty beach, prostitutes and expensive beer- i got confronted with what would seem your average vietnamese person who tries to sell you anything. this lady had her two baskets over her shoulders and was offering pineapples. i'm with the irish crew i met on the bus and staying with, we smile and laugh appropriately, say "no thanks" in vietnamese and then she turns to me, with her ketamine sized meat cleaver, and wails "HAPPY HOUR BUY PINEAPPLE BEFORE HOME OR KILL YOU!". i didn't know whether to laugh, cry, throw all my dong at her or run. thankfully i did the first. she then points at a sleeping simon, cleaver still raised high i the air, and shouts "BUY LADY PINEAPPLE, HAPPY HOUR BEFORE I GO HOME!". holy shit, this shit was intense!

other queer moments include standing in saigon on the cross roads, deliberating which pub to go to and a guy with a sheet of MDF smothered with sunglasses hanging off, comes bowling over and tries to sell me some fake ray bans. at this point am actually wearing my authentic tortoise shell ones, which are prescription glasses. i laugh in jest, point, show him that they're real and i don't need another pair. he then gets irate and reciprocates by insisting i need two more pairs. no, i don't, although he seemed to think otherwise. moments later i have some guy trying to shoo me into a bar with "tantalising" music and insisting that my hair was a perm. i retort by saying it's real. obviously i must have a face that looks riddled with lies and deceit as he then starts pulling at my hair shouting perm!

driving round the red dirt tracks of phu quoc i have to give it to the vietnamese people. some of the roads were nigh on impossible to get through as it's been raining through the night, it's been even more difficult to cruise through some parts. we did well not to hit the deck, if i say so myself, and i saw some woman breeze past with what i can nly describe as a giant wicker pannier rack filled with shit loads of coconuts. i've seen people carry fridges, families of four fly by and guys on bikes selling ice cream. the best has to be the people who walk around with portable weighing machines. who the hell wants to have themselves weighed on the street and for it to be read out loud? i saw one guy with said machine pushing one through mui ne and blasting out an instrumental version of "santa clause is coming to town". searing heat, beach resort, vietnam, july and christmas tunes is just gibroni central dot com.

ice cream on the back of a push bike:

i'm starting to think all these things are harboured by the damn malaria tablets i've unwillingly taken. at least my skin's cleared up and i won't get malaria, despite my sporadic and erratic intake of these capsules. my dreams have never been so vivid (and i dream in technicolour at the best of times). last night there was a storm at 4am. the dogs were going mental, i was convinced they were gonna maul each other to death (this actually happened, well, not the mauling, but the dogs going mental), but then i felt like i was tripping. i absolutely panicked and have never been so scared in my life as i thought i saw three shadows come in my bungalow. that sound of a comb being plucked at began and i could hear voices, clear as get out. i lay there doing the whole "play dead" technique for an hour, unsure whether i was dreaming, awake or plain tripping out (i've been narcotic free for a long time). strange things are almost definitely afoot. damn those doxycyclines!

well this computer's decided to be an utter gibroni also so photos will have to follow another day.

"i'm so hanoied at you!" (cough)

2009-07-23T04:36:00.000-06:00

hanoi 7th july - arrived saigon 24th: with some heinous gaps in our three week entourage!

so i'm sat in the concrete jungle that is saigon. we were gonna skip through it and head straight to phu quoc island, i wasn't too fussed for it at first as i've been yearning for countryside/beach action since i left the queen's land, plus i'm flying out of here in september which'll give me more time then. let's just say, all preconceptions have been smashed. i've fallen prey to the mantra of the big, asian, city life. this place is unreal. i take everything back what i said about motorbikes. today i was stood at a crossroads trying to plot a route across six lanes of solid motorbikes; there were literally thousands of bikes flying past and as i stood in the middle of them, i started to panic, then giggled when i saw an asian guy tailgate me! saigon has restored my faith in cities and reignited the flame of why i love manchester, madrid and berlin so much. it's mental, there's everything you need here, and on top despite the fact it's hot, it's humid, there's the odd monsoon and i probably saw at least thirty rats last night in the space of four hours (i'm not exaggerating), this place still owns.

i guess we expected it to be a bigger, dirtier hanoi. though not necessarily a bad thing, we expected it to have the features of run down buildings mixed with french architecture. this place is the polar opposite. in fact it has it all. how the hell did we end up here?! amazing.

so working our way from hanoi, we spent a few days longer than expected in there due to indecision over which tour and when to go to the wonderful UNESCO site that's ha long bay. this, coupled with the fact becky and scott didn't have a watch nor phone between them, meant notes were being left at hotels and hostels around the city and 10p beer at my new-to-be second home BIA HOI, was consumed intermittently. thus rendering my decision making and organisational as useless!

so back to hanoi; the heat was mental. did i say hot and humid? it was like nothing i'd ever experienced, temperature wise and culturally. after a couple of days of wandering around enjoying the city, something finally clicked. you look beyond the xe oms, above the shops and beyond the people trying to sell you knock-off lonely planet guides to s.e asia (which, apparently. have the funniest translations ever, alongside blurred maps. blunder) and you find those little gems where you wave to a man on a balcony, and he'll come let you in and let you drink, listen to dylan and marley (his choice) until half four in the morning. in hanoi, everything winds down by about 11pm, except the odd bar akin to the quayside or deansgate locks. so it's momets like that, when you're sat with awesome people, in a ridiculously relaxed setting, that can truly make things special. my weekthere pretty much entailed getting to know and appreciate the amazing food, cheap beer at aforementioned bia hoi -quite simply my favourite place to sit and drink beer. you sit on red plastic chairs, on a cross roads, watching the bikes fly by and now and then being shooed back onto the nonexistent pavement while a military looking police truck coasts by.

a bit of background to how i came about being in vietnam. around six weeks before i flew, this all came into fruition. none of this was planned (this will be come a recurring theme in my muses. well, in my life, also!). i was either gonna spend my summer working in debt management (yes, really), saving for canada, or moving back to madrid for two months, before going to canada. a mind on fire night, film sesh and rum for breakfast later and next thing i know i'm booked on a flight into hanoi in july and out of saigon in september. i came out here a multiple entry visa, some malaria tablets that i've hummed and harred over and a few injections to see me through a two month trapse through unknown lands (to me). the initial "plan"* was to travel north to south and then take it from there. see cambodia and laos and pop home then. oh how plans change! i'm now destined for bangkok on the 2nd august on a flight i booked for twenty quid, and gonna head to the south islands and hook up with some people i met in hanoi and others on buses. talk of burma has become a reality. the other day, whilst in mui ne and trying to avoid sunburn, my mind started racing. i really do fancy going somewhere where there are no ATMs, don't accept cards nor cheques and dollar bills? well, they won't accept anything nothing but new, crisp, fresh ones. this whimsical thought looks like it could be the best (or even worst) move i've made all travels. he prospect of myanmar's unique and mysterious ways seem damn fucking endearing. cambodia and laos can wait til early september!

so while hanoi was a plethora of motorbikes, 10p beer and humidity,we then hopped on a seater bus to hue as the sleeper was full. unfortunately we only spent the night there, as we wanted to spend time in hoi an, and out night was pretty much spent on one street. well, that's what you get when the hostel dishes out free beer between 5-6 and then free shots thereafter. i'd like to go back to hue, my memories involve said drunken antics and a gruelling 14hr bus ride next to some gibroni who felt the need to show me pictures of fish all the way there, coupled with the fact the lights were out at 8pm, he was taking up half my seat AND the driver decided to blast music out at 5am followed by a japanese film shown in both vietnamese and japanese (this is when i reached for the valium and diy gin to send me to sleep), we arrive to find a beaming aussie holding a bit of paper with "KATHARINE KENNEDY +2" written on it. holy fucking shit was that a good feeling! a common theme will occur of "another hangover, another 12hr bus journey". the bus journeys have become a staple diet in our adventure and emotions. staying grounded to my roots, out comes the ipod, lost boys and for nap time aphex twin's selected ambient works! ha.

i'll have to fill in the rest another day. today, we've been true "culture vultures", as i like to put it, by trapsing off to district 13 in a cab to indulge in water park action! i haven't been to one since i was a whippersnapper and it's definitely the most fun you can have for 3quid. and now? we're waiting for the 10pm seater to rach gia where we'll then get a boat to phu quoc island. i'll fill in the gaps of hue/hoi an to saigon later. for now, dream of uncle ho and eatin' pho bo for breakfast.

* although can you call it a plan if you booked this trip rummed up with no further clue what to do?

perpetually itchy feet

2009-07-22T06:45:00.000-06:00

so i'm around two and a half weeks into my two month jaunt in south east asia. i don't know where to start, really. i'm sat in the beautiful, but washed out, beach resort of mui ne, vietnam while i ponder my next movement and tipple.

i can be a bit of a cocky one. as i flew into singapore the morning, no wait the afternoon of the 7th july, i thought i'd be able to coast through jetlag and treat it like an "all nighter" but without the alcohol. ha, only then as we touched ground i realised that there was more to it than just putting your body through immense amounts of sleep dep and slowly it dawned on me that it was gonna be pretty bloody tough it i didn't act quick! so i did. i then landed in hanoi, vietnam, at around 14:00 local time and 7am UK time. oh shit, man! in a nut, i'd been away for more than 24hrs and travelled:

morpeth - london roughly 200-300 miles (?)

london - singapore 6754

singapore - hanoi 1358

figured best thing to do is get at least some sleep then power through, so i did, and it honestly worked wonders. three hrs later, i begin to stir and next thing i know seven members of our dorm are heading out in search of cheap and tasty noodles. one guy who'd been here a week, james, his name was, though has left today as money's running out and he knows someone in hong kong (not sure if hong kong would be my prime destination if i was runing low on funds?!?!), took us to a restaurant that lived up to our hopes of tasty and cheap. seven of us rock up to find the streets already overspilling with radge customers (another thing you'll notice that pavements are virtually non-existant and by that, beer lovers, food indulgers and pedestrians have to dodge traffic that way also!). obviously not wanting to miss out on feeding seven rather obvious backpackers, they usher us up to the second floor (the middle floor being where they cook the meal and clean up the crap) and we're place at on chairs and at a table which are quite significantly lower than anything i ever sat at at first school! we felt enormous in comparison. food was amazing and i think the bill only came to the equivalent of one pound fifty each including beers.

people talk about culture shock. they mention sights, smells and other things like that. this is my first time in the far east and i've admittedly never been further east than croatia. with regard to culture shock, all i can say is, watch out for the motorcycles! holy crap, they're EVERYWHERE carrying the most insane (and often obtrusive) objects possible. i saw a family of four on one, darting round a cement mixer that nearly ploughed into our mini bus from the airport. oh hang on, after half an hour i suddenly realised that death on hanoi's roads wasn't imminent, and that's just how they drive. seriously, if it's too busy for them (you can't even compare to back home) they drive on the pavement, no-one goes in one direction, the horn's used for pretty much everything (as far as i can see!) and they take no prisoners! i was stood gaping at one cross roads. literally thousands of bikes then fleeshed past, darting in and out of buses, taxis and other big, motarised, metal objects. no one flinches and off they pop. so funny. literally, though, if you wanna cross the road, you've got to take a deep breath and just walk, watching all directions, or more simply, latching yourself onto a local and tailgating them across five lanes of traffiv.

xe.com has proved to be my trusty friend, while i incessently flip between dong, dollars and sterling. pulling out a million dong made me feel momentarily rich, until i realised it only clocks in at just over thirty quid!

staying at hanoi backpackers' hostel i couldn't have picked a better hostel to ease me into the madness of this city (and maybe country). it almost definitely softened the blow of fear of not meeting anyone and being stumped! seriously, its been a breeze and that place is filled with travellers, most of which want to hear other tales and share a beer at the drop of a hat. i was also secretly loving the air con in our dorm. ha ha ha cheating, eh?

more on hanoi and our ventures from north to south later. battling more rain and 50p beer beckons.

oh yeah, and sporadic adding of photos can be found here, though my monthly limit is nearly full: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ktshopsatlidl/